This invention relates to systems and methods of recognizing what page a book is opened to (e.g, what page a user is reading from a book). More particularly, this invention relates to recognizing the page of a book that a user is reading and subsequently playing an audio segment associated to the recognized page.
Talking books have been developed that employ mechanical schemes in order to recognize the particular page that a user is reading from a book. One example of such a mechanical talking book is present in Haas et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,954,514 that is assigned to Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, N.Y.
Such mechanical talking books employ thick pages, usually made out of cardboard, that are placed in a binder. These binder-pages are moved along binder rings and contain magnets that interact with stationary Hall effect sensors as the pages are turned. After a Hall effect sensor recognizes a page turning, a prerecorded message is played that is associated to the Hall effect sensor for that page. Such prior art mechanical talking books are deficient for many reasons. First, these books require large, thick, and rigid pages which ultimately limit the number of pages that can be efficiently realized in the talking book. As the number of pages increase in such books so does the complexity of the book's design. For example, numerous magnets may be required to be placed in specific locations on a page so that when a page is turned, a specific magnet passes over a specific Hall effect sensor. The number of pages, therefore, are limited to the number of Hall effect sensors that can be placed on the binder.
Furthermore, magnets have to extend from each page, thereby increasing the book's size. Moreover, these magnets only interact with the Hall effect sensors as the pages are turned. If a user opens such a book to a random page, by opening one bulk of pages to the left of the book's spine and one bulk of pages to the right of the book's spine, the book has no way to distinguish what page the book is opened to. Such conventional talking books do not have autonomous page recognition because these books sense when a page is turned to, not when a page is viewable to the user.
Talking books have also been developed that use infrared detection schemes to recognize when a page is turned. One example of an infrared talking book can be found in Brefka et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,636,881 that is assigned to James T. Shaw of Sagaponack of New York.
Infrared talking books are at a disadvantage because they have to keep track of the number of pages that have been turned. As a result, if a user would like to begin reading from page 50 then that user would have to begin on page 1 and turn each page individually, making sure that each page was recognized, until page 50 was reached. If the first 50 pages were simply turned at the same time in a group, the talking book would only recognize a single page as being turned and, as a result, the wrong audio-segment would be played.
Other non-autonomous talking books have also been developed that rely on user-interactions with the book or desired page to output the desired audio segment. One example of such a non-autonomous talking book can be seen in Tabachnik et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,330,427. Here, resistors of varying valued resistors are located on each page so that when a user touches an audio device to a resistor having a particular resistance, an audio segment associated to that particular resistance is played.
Non-autonomous talking books are deficient because they require the user to interact with the book, such as turning the book's pages or interacting with a page's resistive sensor, in order to hear an audio segment for a particular page or portion of a page.
It is therefore desirable to provide systems and methods for improved talking and interactive books. More particularly, is therefore desirable to realize an autonomous talking book that does not require any specific actions by the user (e.g., touching an audio device to the pages or specifically turning the pages). Such an autonomous talking book would be capable of recognizing which page, or pair of pages, is in an open position without any special handling of the book.